Cornel West Reader Quotes

“Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture (or civilization) ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature.”
― Cornel West, Cornel West Reader

“I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it.”
― Cornel West, Cornel West Reader

“Music at its best...is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us--beyond language--to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial
heights of our silence. ”
― Cornel West, Cornel West Reader

“In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightfully discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I defend the fundamental claim of Marxist theory: there must be countervailing forces that defend people's needs against the brutality of profit driven capitalism.”
― Cornel West, Cornel West Reader

“Prophetic pragmatism attempts to keep alive the sense of alternative ways of life and of struggle based on the best of the past. In this sense, the praxis of prophetic pragmatism is tragic action with revolutionary intent, usually reformist consequences and always visionary outlook.”
― Cornel West, Cornel West Reader

“This sense of political impotence-"this experience of acquiescence without commitment"'-yields three basic forms of politics: sporadic terrorism for impatient, angry and nihilistic radicals; professional reformism for comfortable, cultivated and concerned liberals; and evangelical nationalism for frightened, paranoid and accusatory conservatives.”
― Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader

“Those notions of freedom, courage and joy would probably be the three fundamental motifs in my work, and I think that they are probably best enacted in the best of the black musical tradition.”
― Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader